Design of a Broadband Reconfigurable Antenna With Switchable Single and Dual Beams and Polarization

This letter proposes a broadband reconfigurable antenna capable of forming single and dual beam radiation, with switchable polarization states. The antenna consists of a reconfigurable power divider and a 2 × 2 magnetoelectric dipole antenna array. The two ports of the antenna units operate independently to achieve mutually orthogonal dual-polarization characteristics. A grounded thin copper column is placed between adjacent antenna units to enhance the operating bandwidth and reduce coupling between units. To achieve stable dual beam radiation, a wideband phase shift branch is added into the design of the power divider to ensure a stable 180° phase difference in the range of 3.5 GHz to 6 GHz. Additionally, by embedding diodes into the power divider to control the switching between different states, different antenna units can be activated to achieve polarization conversion and switching between single and dual beams. The switching of the antenna working state is controlled by an external micro-control system to ensure stable and rapid switching between beam states. The experimental and simulation results are in good agreement, and it can be seen that the antenna operates in the range of 3.52 GHz to 6 GHz with four polarization modes and eight beam states. As an application, this antenna is highly suitable for complex communication scenarios.